Church renovation forges on

St. Michael's project now minus BLOC Ministries

Aug. 14, 2013

Despite a break up with partner BLOC Ministries, Lower Price Hill Community School officials are pressing forward with a $8 million renovation plan for St. Michael's Catholic church into a community space for the Lower Price Hill community. / The Enquirer

How to help

If you wish to make a donation, ask about meeting spaces at St. Michael’s upon completion of the project or learn more about being the project’s partner in securing the tax credits, contact Jen Walters at 513-244-2214 or jenw@lphcs.org.

A few slight changes
in the plan

If the Restore St. Michael’s Project funding comes through, as organizers expect, the $8 million would renovate the Lower Price Hill Community School and all of St. Michael’s, the city’s second-oldest Catholic Church built in 1847, to historic preservation standards. It would also stabilize the exteriors of other buildings in the church complex. The plan still includes creation of a few apartments and studio space for rent, as well as a commercial kitchen – where the hope is to eventually offer college-level culinary courses. Meeting spaces, including the large sanctuary, will be available for the community events and outside groups. Instead of an earlier focus on arts and entertainment, new ideas for the space include a co-op laundromat, community garden and other features “where the whole neighborhood can celebrate, learn and find new opportunities together,” according to Executive Director Jen Walters. The church complex was donated to the school in 2008 by the Archdiocese of Cincinnati after St. Michael’s closed in the late ‘90s due to declining membership. What about that $250,000 from the Ohio AG Office?

An earlier article about this project referenced a $250,000 donation from Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine. The grant was approved, but because BLOC applied for the funds and is no longer involved, they will not be awarded to the St. Michael’s project, said office spokesman Dan Tierney. Such grants come from legal fines and settlements from charitable lawsuits.

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Jen Walters is full of resolve, sitting in her makeshift office in the fourth floor attic of St. Michael’s the Archangel Church.

About a year ago, Walters announced a renovation of the Lower Price Hill Community School, a nonprofit agency she directs that for more than 30 years has provided educational opportunities like GED prep, college courses and job training. She also talked about an ambitious transformation of St. Michael’s into a multi-use neighborhood center supporting the unique needs of Lower Price Hill residents.

In the spring, school officials like Walters and their project partners at BLOC Ministries, a West Side faith-based organization, explained to potential donors that $2.2 million in private investment could leverage almost $8 million for the project because it qualified for historic preservation and new market tax credits.

The money has been raised, says Walters, but BLOC Ministries is out, casting some uncertainty over a project that school officials and community members see as vital for the future of the community, where nearly half of its residents live in poverty, 64 percent of its students drop out of school, according to the 2010 U.S. Census, and drug and human trafficking run rampant.

Walters and other school leaders, however, are determined to see the project through. The school has raised almost 90 percent of the funds, she said, and their donors want to press forward. She’s actively seeking a bank or a certified community development entity to sign on with the project and lock in the tax credits.

“We are still all in,” Walters says. “We aren’t looking to come in and change Lower Price Hill, but to improve upon the positive qualities that are here and highlight those. We are the type of project that tax credits were intended for.”

BLOC will continue work in Lower Price Hill

In many ways, the destinies of St. Michael’s and Lower Price Hill are intermingled.

Built in 1847 in the center of the neighborhood, the church served generations of Catholic parishioners until it closed in the late 1990s due to dwindling membership.

Lower Price Hill Community School, which moved into the closed St. Michael’s School in the 1970s, became the defacto community center, where births, funerals and weddings were celebrated, in the downstairs bingo hall.

In other words, St. Michael’s is not just another building in the tiny community.

The decision to move on with the project at the church without BLOC Ministries was made by the Lower Price Hill Community School’s board of directors over a difference of opinion about what residents need out of the new center and how it should be managed, says Maria Curro Kreppel, a board member for 4 years and long-time supporter of the school.

“This is a very human set of circumstances,” Kreppel said of the break-up. “It would not have been responsible to move further down the path (with) this project, knowing things weren’t in sync enough.”

BLOC was disappointed by the turn of events, said Executive Director Dwight Young, who preferred not to delve into their disagreements and says his ministry will continue to work in Lower Price Hill.

“We feel like we are called by God to be there,” Young said. “They’ll do what they do best, and we’ll do what we do best.”

BLOC Ministries, which runs the BLOC Coffee Company in East Price Hill among other ministries that provide after-school programs, employment, living space and other assistance for roughly 3,000 people a month in West Side neighborhoods, has staff living and working on State Avenue in Lower Price Hill. BLOC’s desire is to acquire another building to bring arts, entertainment and job training to the neighborhood, as they had hoped to do at St. Michael’s, Young said. Mike Altman, formerly the arts director of the St. Michael’s project, would lead that endeavor, Young says.

They’re also considering opening an eatery in the neighborhood, which has no restaurants, Young says.

Kreppel says there’s room for both organizations in Lower Price Hill and there are no ill feelings.

Renovations can happen
without full funding

Paul LeBlanc can vouch for the impact Lower Price Hill Community School has had in his neighborhood.

He moved into his grandmother’s Lower Price Hill home after his mother died in 1993.

Six years old, he acclimated well to the small, tight-knit community where block parties, after school pick-up games and volleyball with beat cops was the norm.

Today, the small neighborhood of only about 1,000 residents is as close as ever, LeBlanc says, but they’ve got a real problem with outsiders coming to Lower Price Hill to sell drugs.

He’s thrilled both BLOC Ministries and the school – a community center in its own right – remain committed. He’s also glad the two parted ways over St. Michael’s.

“My personal reason? I’ve learned to know (the St. Michael’s staff) very well, and they have done stuff for me that I would have never expected.”

“The school really wants to turn this into a community space,” LeBlanc says. And they really get the community, because they’re like one big family, he says.

“I’ve volunteered at St. Michael’s with the pantry and the soup kitchen ... since I was about 14,” LeBlanc says. “For at least the last 20 years (Lower Price Hill Community School) has allowed us to use the hall free of charge for community council meetings, family dinners.”

Like Walters, her small staff and the other students at the school, LeBlanc is working out of the west wing of St. Michael’s now with renovations at the neighboring school set to begin soon.

“We promised our donors that we would renovate the school and get the sanctuary up to community-usable space and that is what we are committed to do, one way or another, with or without the tax credits,” Walters says.

She’s optimistic a partner will come through – and has been granted some leniency on the expired tax credit deadline. But Walter’s also realistic. Renoviations can be made with the money they’ve already raised, but she’d hate to miss the chance to renovate to historic preservation standards.

“It might seem like a little deal to the business world, but this is a big deal for this neighborhood,” Walters says. “(Residents) are going to dictate what happens here and that’s what changes neighborhoods.”